The present invention relates to a centrifuge with a self-emptying drum with expulsion openings in its jacket that lead from the solids space and that can be closed off by a piston slide associated with a closure chamber which can be supplied with a closure fluid and which has outlet channels around it that can be closed off by a hydraulically operated valve and through which the closure fluid can be supplied when the valve is open to a chamber with throttled outlet holes bored into it.
A centrifuge of this type, in which the valve body rests on springs that act in the closure direction and has a hydraulically active surface subjected to the closure fluid taken in by the chamber when the valve is open, is known from German Offenlegungsschrift No. 1 909 996. The closure fluid and the action of the springs in this centrifuge move the valve body into and maintain it in the closure position, initiating the closing motion of the piston slide. Since the pressure can not build up enough to close the piston slide in the closure chamber until the valve is closed and since it takes time for the valve body to close, the piston slide can not be made to stroke very high when the device is only partially emptied. When, on the other hand, the piston slide is only partly opened, it is impossible to optimally remove the solids because the slight overall expulsion-opening cross-section left free by the slide does not allrw the girdle of solids to break up.